


nothing but dreams inside

by 1000_directions



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Bisexual Niall, Blow Jobs, Body Dysphoria (Past), Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Lou, Louis Tomlinson as Spider-Man, M/M, Trans Louis Tomlinson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 19:25:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14960646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000_directions/pseuds/1000_directions
Summary: “Think you’re the nicest bloke I’ve met in London,” Louis said eventually.“Think you’re a pretty nice bloke as well,” Niall said gently.“You do know that I am, yeah?” Louis ventured. “A bloke?”Louis Tomlinson doesn’t become the Spider-Lad until he’s fifteen, but he’s always been a boy.





	nothing but dreams inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexenglish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexenglish/gifts).



> I mean...this was probably inevitable.
> 
> Thank you to [Jamila](http://dearmrsawyer.tumblr.com) for being my earliest sounding-board for this story, and thank you to [Angela](https://sarcathlon.tumblr.com) for reading over a few different versions of this and helping me figure out where I needed to go. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone.
> 
> Please be aware that while I always try my best to be respectful of other people's experiences, I am cis. If I inadvertently wrote anything offensive or bothersome, I am so sorry. Please let me know so that I can try to be better in the future.
> 
> Happy birthday, Alex. You deserve the whole entire world, and I hope you get it <3

Louis can’t actually hear the sounds of the Thames from his perch atop one of the turrets of Tower Bridge. He can’t really see it either with how dark and thick the night air is, though the specs within his mask inform him that the water is in fact there, 68.25 metres below, swaying the boats and leaves and bits of rubbish that float on the surface. But when he takes off his mask and closes his eyes, he imagines he hears the sound of waves, gently rocking London to sleep. He doesn’t hear anything else: no cries for help, no alarms, nothing that needs tending to. This is almost the best part of Louis’ day.

In this moment of contentment, he feels far away from the person he was when he first put on the mask back in Donny, fifteen years old and desperate for a way to make the most of a once-in-a-lifetime freak accident. As if he hadn’t already felt like an awkward outcast before some dickhead spider came along and bit him, cheers for that. But still, there’s something familiar in the way he becomes the truest and most authentic version of himself as Spider-Man. He constructed this image intentionally, an outside to match his insides, and he is blissfully comfortable inside this spider skin.

Early on, it seemed like maybe it was just the sensory experience that spoke to him. His new spider senses picked up an overwhelming amount of information, and he needed a physical barrier to filter some of it out. The costume was like a little deprivation unit he could disappear into, and he liked the feeling of being contained so tightly inside his compressive suit. Like the entire experience of being a small-town superhero was pressed up against his skin. The embrace of a grateful neighbourhood.

The first time someone he rescued turned to him gratefully and said, “Thanks, lad,” he was prepared to respond with, “I’m a girl,” the automatic response of someone who had corrected others dozens of times a week for most of their life. It was the way he always responded. The world had always insisted that Louis was a girl, at the same time that it punished him for never being quite feminine enough. And Louis had never disagreed, never realised he was allowed to, had never even considered that he _wanted_ to.

But something about being hidden under a mask and an extremely compressive bodysuit gave Louis a thrilling sense of self-determination he had never experienced before. And in that moment, beneath his costume, he felt exquisitely seen. A woman called him a lad, and something inside of him answered, “Cheers, thanks for finally noticing.”

And so Louis became the Spider-Lad, keeping the streets of Doncaster free of thugs and petty criminals and dickheads who got too rough with girls who’d had a tad too much to drink. He changed his costume bit by bit, getting it tighter and tighter until it felt like his own skin. And as it flattened out his chest, it revealed a different body inside his own body, and he liked how it looked and how it felt. And eventually, the costume became the truth, and Louis Tomlinson became the disguise he wore during the day, lying to everyone’s face until he could come home and become his real self again.

Leaving Donny behind was gutting, but he couldn’t imagine living openly as himself back home, and the idea of living a lie for the rest of his life was not a possibility. So he moved to London, bought a binder off Amazon, got a sick tattoo of a spider on the back of his neck, made mates with the tattoo artist, made mates with all her mates, tagged along when they all went to watch her friend play guitar at their usual shitty club that reeked of stale beer and vinegar, and that’s how–

But shit, that first binder was _sick_. He remembers the feel of those early days in London, wearing it like his armour, like it made him invincible. He was ready for a battle that rarely came, but when it did come, he was prepared. He remembers cutting his hair short – _no, shorter than that, really tighten it up underneath_ – and feeling the air on the back of his neck, running his fingers curiously over the shaved bits and exploring the strange softness of his own shorn scalp. He remembers coming home at the end of the workday and taking off his binder to put on his spider-skin, how it felt to slip from one best version of himself into the other. He started with the hormones, finally, finally, and as his voice deepened, he finally saw himself becoming the Spider-Man he was always meant to be. And then after the surgery–

In the distance, Big Ben starts to chime its midnight melody, pulling Louis back into the present. Right then, time to head home. He shimmies halfway down the tower and keeps to the shadows as he cuts a familiar path through the city. It isn’t too long before he’s webbing his way along his own street. He hums a song to himself as he dangles from one streetlight and swings to the the next until he’s approaching his own flat. He slithers up the wall and lets himself in the bedroom window even though Niall is always telling him _Use the damn door, you absolute savage_.

Niall is lounging on the bed in his striped pyjama bottoms, glasses perched on the end of his nose, mouthing the words as he reads the same book he’s been trying to get through all month. And when Niall looks up at Louis and smiles his soft smile and says, “Made it home in one piece then, did you?” this is it. This is the actual best part of Louis’ day.

⦕⎈⦖

So what happened was: Zayn gave him the spider tattoo, and then Louis went with her to see her mate Niall play in the shitty club, and from the moment Louis saw that gangly bleached-blond weirdo on the stage, he was so stupidly in love that he barely knew what to do with himself.

“Sounded sick,” Louis said when they were introduced.

“Cheers, lad,” Niall replied kindly, and those two words turned Louis’ blood to soft, sweet honey in his veins.

“Buy you a pint?” Louis asked, trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel.

“Never say no to a pint,” Niall said. And maybe it was true, maybe Niall would have said yes to absolutely anyone, but his easy grin and his gentle eyes felt specific to Louis.

One pint had turned to two, and soon enough they were splitting a basket of chips, smiling each time their salty fingers brushed against one another. And the longer they talked, the closer they gravitated to each other, until they were practically sharing the same barstool, Niall’s legs open and easy and Louis nestled between them, leaning his arse against Niall’s thigh more than properly sitting in his lap. And it was easy as anything ever was going to be for Louis, but even stood like that, Niall’s hips giving his own a gentle squeeze, his mind was racing. _Does he like me? Is he even queer? Does he know I’m a boy?_

The first two seemed easy enough to deal with. It was a gay bar, for fuck’s sake, and Niall was part of Zayn’s circle of friends, so yeah, dumbarse, he was probably some variety of queer. And Louis could feel Niall’s cock half-hard against his arse each time he shifted position, and one of Niall’s hands was making gentle circles over Louis’ side, his fingers tracing ephemeral trails that bled through Louis’ t-shirt and teased at his skin. Niall had his mouth right near Louis’ ear, and each word was warm and soft against Louis’ face.

“Can we get some air?” Louis blurted out, suddenly too hot and overwhelmed and confused.

“Course,” Niall said. “Shall I come with?”

“Please,” Louis said. “Just need a smoke, but you can keep me company if you like.”

They’d walked out of the club together, Louis leading the way with Niall’s clever hand pressed to the small of his back, and Louis soaked up every last bit of it because there was no guarantee he’d ever get to have this again.

Louis led them around to the back alley near the loading dock, where he’d seen the bartenders smoking on their breaks, but there was no one else back there, and he didn’t make any move to pull out his cigarettes, just leant himself against the wall and stared down at nothing and counted his breaths and tried to prepare himself for his least favourite conversation.

“Do you want me to leave?” Niall asked after a bit, and Louis looked up at him and really _looked_ at him, blue eyes you could take a damn bath in, spiky hair that was blond at the tips but growing in dark near the roots, baby-faced but serious and lovely and earnest and practically fuckin’ _sparkling_ with possibility.

“Think you’re the nicest bloke I’ve met in London,” Louis said eventually.

“Think you’re a pretty nice bloke as well,” Niall said gently.

“You do know that I am, yeah?” Louis ventured. “A bloke?”

“I know a little from Zayn,” Niall said. “Rather hear it from you, to be honest. If you want, that is. Doesn’t really matter to me.”

“What’s that mean?” Louis asked, and his heart was racing like a hamster on a little wheel, not quite getting anywhere but shit, was it ever trying.

“Pretty sure I like you no matter what,” Niall said, and then he was the one not quite making eye contact. “I want you to tell me whatever you need to tell me to feel comfortable. But it’s not gonna change how bad I want to kiss you.”

“Yeah?” Louis asked softly, and the hamster in his heart ran faster.

“Yeah,” Niall said. He took a step towards Louis, put his hand on the wall above his head, and Louis’ eyes closed. It was so fucking stupid, going out into an alley with a stranger and trusting him, but Louis needed it. He fucking needed this.

“I’m a boy,” Louis reminded him, and Niall said, “I know, love,” and then he was kissing Louis so gently that time stopped and held its breath and watched Louis disintegrate under the touch of the kindest mouth he’d ever known.

Louis hadn’t pulled much since moving to London. He’d kissed the beer-soaked breath from a couple drunk boys and given more than a few handies in the loo of the only gay bar on the block, but he hadn’t properly gone home with anyone in yonks. So he wasn’t expecting Niall to be so interested so fast, and he found himself wholly unprepared for how quickly he got from chastely kissing Niall in an alley to being on his back in Niall’s single bed with the headboard banging against the wall and Louis praying that Niall’s housemate was a deep sleeper as Niall fucked his tongue hard into Louis’ eager mouth.

“Is it good?” Niall murmured, his voice a velvet slip of sin against Louis’ neck, and Louis nodded violently and felt Niall get harder against his hip, and Louis wrapped his legs around Niall’s body and tried to lose himself in the idea of someone actually _wanting him_ when he’d spent so long suspecting that he might never find anyone to appreciate who he was and who he was becoming, like he might spend the next three decades apologising for existing until no one even cared anymore.

“It’s fucking good,” Louis finally said, going for Niall’s trousers with both hands, palming at his dick through his clothing and being rewarded with Niall’s heady groan. “Let me suck you.”

And that, he’d known how to do, and there was something so decadent about the feel of Niall’s cock in his mouth, his hand weakly petting at the short hair on the back of Louis’ neck. He felt so exquisitely wanted in a way he never had before. Louis suspected that most of the blokes he’d gotten off with before hadn’t cared much who he was, just wanted to stick their dick in something warm and willing. But there was something cathartic and victorious about getting Niall off, lovely Niall who kissed Louis and took him home and kept mumbling his name and touching the sweaty skin of his neck, not pushing him, more like he was checking to make sure Louis was still there. And when Niall came, Louis felt like a champion.

“Well, shit,” Niall said eventually, panting up to the ceiling. Louis’ head was on Niall’s stomach, and he rocked easily with every breath Niall took.

“Was that good?” Louis asked, a little smug and a lot happy.

“It was a bit of all right, yeah,” Niall said, and then he laughed heartily. “How would you like me to get you off, then?”

“I’m not really sure,” Louis said, sitting upright. No one had ever offered before, and he wasn’t quite sure what he was ready for. Beneath his binder, he started sweating.

“How about you have a little think about it,” Niall said, “and when you know what you want, you let me know?”

⦕⎈⦖

“You’ve been reading that same book for weeks,” Louis says, shimmying out of his suit and letting the cool air of the flat hit his overheated skin.

“I get distracted and lose focus,” Niall says. “I have a reckless boyfriend, and I worry about him when he’s off saving the city.” Louis steps into a clean pair of boxers and flops facedown on the bed next to Niall. He places his hand on Niall’s thigh and leaves it there.

“Don’t need to worry about me anymore,” Louis mumbles into the bedsheets. “I’m right here.”

“Think that means I need to worry more than ever,” Niall murmurs. He strokes his cool hand up and down over Louis’ flushed back, and Louis shivers at his touch. “How was it out there?”

“Quiet,” Louis says. “Boring.”

“Show me,” Niall says, and Louis shakes his head and grumbles about it, but he rolls over onto his back and lets Niall complete his inspection. Gentle fingertips trace over every part of him, his neck, his shoulders, down his arms, over the scars on his pecs, skipping across ribs and prodding gently at his stomach.

“Satisfied?” Louis asks, and he tries to be nonchalant about it, but still, even now, he is overwhelmed by the intensity of Niall, how he cares so fucking much that he needs to check Louis all over for bruises and bumps and broken bones every single night. It’s been six years, but he’s still so fucking loved.

⦕⎈⦖

They’d been together only a few months when Louis realised what he had. They were at the usual club together, dancing and kissing and being ridiculous and obvious in ways Louis had never imagined were available to him. He’d popped off to the loo, and when he came back, Niall was talking to some of Zayn’s mates with an unimpressed look on his face.

“I don’t care for the word bisexual,” one of them was saying as Louis approached the table. “It’s so transphobic and heteronormative. It just reinforces the binary.”

“Well,” Niall had said evenly, “I’m bisexual, and my boyfriend is trans, but please, continue explaining my own labels to me.”

They’d made awkward excuses and left, and Louis just stood there dumbfounded until Niall noticed him and beckoned him back over with an easy smile.

“Missed you,” Niall murmured, sliding his hands down Louis’ hips.

“I’m your boyfriend?” he blurted out. He’d never been anyone’s boyfriend before.

“Course,” Niall said. “If you want to be.”

“I want it,” Louis said. “Fuck, I want it so bad.” He caught Niall’s head in his trembling hands and kissed him hard and messy. “And I heard what you said to those dickheads. You’re my hero, you know that?”

“And you’re my hero,” Niall said. And that didn’t even make _sense_ , but Louis was going to run with this.

“Let’s go back to mine,” Louis said, and then he said something so reckless and inevitable that he surprised himself with his own audacity. “I wanna explain my spider tattoo to you. I want to tell you everything.” 

⦕⎈⦖

At fifteen, Louis Tomlinson’s life was a tangle of insecurities, with multiple secret identities coiled up one inside the other. At twenty-six, lying in bed beside a boyfriend who sees every part of him and loves every last bit...he thinks he’s done okay for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> ♬♪ Spider-Lou, Spider-Lou, does whatever spiders do ♪♫
> 
> [tumblr](http://1000-directions.tumblr.com/post/174998025109/nothing-but-dreams-inside-by-1000directions-for)


End file.
